Gayla Bentley Fashion

Gayla Bentley Fashion was a luxury clothing line built for plus size women, offering sizes that high end designers often ignored. The problem it addressed was real and underserved, the lack of elegant, well made fashion for fuller figures at the upper end of the market. Designer Gayla Bentley, based in Houston, Texas, created the line to give curvy women clothing that felt aspirational rather than an afterthought.

Bentley asked for a substantial investment for a minority stake. Barbara Corcoran and Daymond John, the latter with deep fashion industry experience through his own apparel background, saw the opportunity in an overlooked customer base. They teamed up, and the deal that closed gave the two sharks a combined half of the business in return for their money and connections.

The pitch stood out because the plus size luxury segment was genuinely open, and Bentley spoke about her customers with conviction. Pairing a fashion focused shark like Daymond John with Corcoran's marketing instincts looked like a strong fit for a designer trying to scale a clothing brand beyond a regional following.

Bentley secured prestigious placement, including the Neiman Marcus luxury department store, and expanded into boutiques across many states with some international reach. For a time the brand grew into the kind of upscale distribution the founder had hoped to reach when she entered the Tank.

The business later ran into serious trouble. Reporting points to Hurricane Harvey flooding her Houston operations in 2017 as a major blow the company could not recover from, and the brand ceased operations around 2018. Bentley has since worked as a fashion and style consultant rather than running the label.